Mark Drakeford in his new constituency office as Cardiff West AM Photograph: Hannah Waldram/guardian.co.uk

If Mark Drakeford had a mantra for how he plans to see out his five year term as Assembly Member for Cardiff West, it'd be 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'.

Slipping into arguably one of the most comfortably Labour seats into the city, Drakeford is taking over from the political heavyweight Rhodri Morgan – in a constituency with majority Labour councillors and a Labour MP.

"There's an office and people who have been working with Rhodri in the past so there's an infrastructure ready for you to rely on so I've been able to pick up on those things straight away and because I worked in the Assembly for such a long time I know my way around there too.

"The Assembly is starting to gear itself up for the next five years. But there's a real job of work to be done – people look to the Assembly member for all the help they need."

But while Drakeford is aware of his relative ease in securing the seat (he won with a majority of 5,901) – he doesn't appear to show any signs of slacking – and as a former Cardiff council and 10-year special advisor to Rhodri Morgan – he knows the ropes and is eager to get behind them.

"What you can't aim to do is pretend to be somebody who you're not. It was helpful to me on the doorstep that Rhodri's retirement was so well signalled and discussed so I didn't have to explain that.

"It's for me now to do the job in my way and to create a relationship with people and with organisations. But there's a fantastic Labour tradition in Cardiff West of which Rhodri has been an outstanding part and I'm keen to continue in that tradition."

Drakeford was the ward councillor from 1985 – 1993 for Pontcanna, alongside Jane Hutt and Jane Davidson. He left to tend to a young family and re-entered politics in time for Rhodri's time as first minister. His interest in politics he says was part of the fabric of school life where he grew up in Carmarthen – and he started door canvassing aged 17 – he's nostalgic about a thirst for politics in his salad days but admiring of the situation for the Welsh democracy now.

"I was always interested in politics. In the 1960s it was a political atmosphere – people marched around the playground chanting about politics. In the 1974 general election we'd be in the far reaches of the north Carmarthenshire and knock on a door to say the MP was here and people would run back inside and get changed because you couldn't meet an MP in slippers.

"I genuinely believe that over the period of time the Assembly has been in being, that it has grown in the significance that people understand that it has. For younger people, they can't imagine a time when there wasn't an Assembly. It's taken for granted piece of the democratic landscape and with its new powers it will be able to act more quickly and comprehensively."

Drakeford, 56, has three children in their 20s and lives with his wife in Pontcanna. He moved to Cardiff as a probation officer in Ely in 1979 and says his knowledge of youth, homelessness and unemployment has influenced his passion to change policy on these issues. As a professor of Social Policy at Cardiff University, he is also interested working on health and social policy.

"Employment and youth unemployment in particular – there's no more urgent public policy issue facing the Assembly than that and it hits sharply in Cardiff West.

"The idea of a lost generation in the 1980s wasn't just a piece of journalistic fiction – you could see it on the ground. It's not the same, yet, because there have been en years of solid economic growth – Ely is a very different place in terms of investment and quality of basic services and feels different. In 1992 you could canvas Ely in the daytime because people were at home, you couldn't do that in the last ten years but things are heading in the wrong direction.

"Cardiff has a role of the economic motor for south Wales and we do have a housing crisis looming in Cardiff and the LDP has to be thoroughly debated and be a vehicle for making something positive happen there."

Mark Drakeford outside the Millennium Stadium - he says Cardiff council needs more of a future vision for the city

A stint at Cardiff council has hardened the representative to the city councillors on the administration – and he's keen they shall not be allowed to sit back and complain without making things happen – particularly with the Local Development Plan which was scrapped first time round.

"It's a pretty sorry record – the latest can only be seen in the context of their failure first time round. Personally I think there's no excuse for it – the council is the only in Wales and it makes out it was the process that was the problem – but 21 other councils are operating the process. They've lost a huge amount of time and alienated people's good will.

"My own most fundamental thought about the LDP is that you can't regard issues to do with Cardiff in isolation from its hinterland. You can't think of housing need for example as something which can only be solved within the boundaries of Cardiff itself.

"The council can't just sit back and call for a regional approach – it has to be a catalyst for making it – sometimes the council behaves as if it was just the object of other people's actions, rather than having a set of responsibilities – it has huge capacities to make things happen rather than sit back and complain about things happening to it."

But Drakeford, fumbling with his hands and shoelaces during in our interview, gives the impression as not being so keen on the limelight and says it is taking getting some used to:

"I was determined as a special advisor myself was to be out of the public eye as much as possible. The ministers needed to be the front office of a place so people understood the Assembly.

"It is different – it's not like I haven't done it before but in a different way to a smaller extent – but it does take getting used to again. I still find it strange when people come up to me in places.

"When I was Rhodri's advisor I used to joke I'd dread Monday mornings because somewhere you could be sure during the morning the phone would go and somebody would say 'oh Rhodri told me to phone in this morning, I met him by the fresh fish counter in Tesco on Saturday' and now I have people stopping me in Tescos – that does take a bit of getting used to."

Your questions answered

"It's the most pressing concern facing us, and as AM's they need to acknowledge their role in guiding economic development."

Answer:

"I'm optimistic about the Welsh economy despite these being difficult times. The underlying problem since the end of coal, iron and steel, has been the European economy we are on the Western Fringe so supply lines are always the longest and we're always furthest away from company headquarters, major markets and stuff like that and we've had a 50-year struggle to make the Welsh economy survive and thrive in that context.

"In the year of energy shortage some of those things which have been disadvantages to us in the past can now be advantages to Wales over the next period. Wind, Wave, water, biomass – all the things which I think are going to really matter of the next 50 years, Wales has in abundance. If we are smart we can turn our geography into an economic driver for the future of the Welsh economy.

"Cardiff already shows it's been able to be successful in creating a new economy on new industries, technologies and new possibilities. A piece of thinking needs to be done on how we see the future of Cardiff as a capital. Where are the other cities of our scale and size, where we can see things they have which make thema success.

"There are places we can look to and learn from. The incumbent administration has been so poor at – it doesn't have a sense of Cardiff as a place and its future – it doesn't look up and lift its eyes above the immediate and the local."

Q:

A:

"I cycle myself to work as much as possible but I'm not a very confident cyclist because the of the way the cycle lanes are so intermittent and motorists park in them.

"Responsibility for cycling used to be split between promotion and spending but now they will be more closely aligned so we can get more impetus for provision.

"But the sober economic outlook for public spending in Wales means when anybody says can we have more spent on something we have to understand that is more of less because the Assembly's budget is going down."